


you ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece

by inmadhouses



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Musician Harry, Original Universe, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-06-05 17:18:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15175553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmadhouses/pseuds/inmadhouses
Summary: A little something about about afternoon drinking, bad break-ups, and making questionable decisions like buying leather jackets that cost more than an average person’s annual income.





	you ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece

i.

It felt like black.

Like an abyss with no end and pain was all that she could register. Copious amounts of it.

Even if she could find the words, there was no poetic way to describing the pain.

She rolled off the couch and landed on the ground with a less than graceful thump. There was a throbbing at the back of her head and a crick in her neck.

She stared at the clock on her wall to see that it was a little past one in the afternoon. Realising that she must have passed out after one too many shots of Belvedere before noon, she blindly patted around for her phone. Locating it somewhere on the folds of her couch, she saw no pending messages and so she reached for the remnants of her breakfast, aka the vodka, precariously placed on the coffee table.

She unscrewed the lid and lifted the bottle to her lips once more.

Because if she was going to be absolutely catatonically fucked, she might as well inhabit every sense of the word. Because if she was going to hit rock bottom, she might as well do it pissed off her arse.

Because, well, because why the hell not.

It hurt. It hurt the first time, the tenth, and the fiftieth. And she had lost count of the number of texts she’d sent him. Because she continued sending him drunk gibberish texts long after it had become apparent that he had his mind made up.

The sting of thorough rejection whenever she thought about him permeated through her very being, and she felt as though the world had stopped spinning at the exact moment he said he couldn’t do it anymore. Or maybe it just started to spin again and after sitting in a solitary stillness that was her life, it felt absolutely impossible to keep up.

Her vision blurred and there was no better reason than to take another swig of vodka.

It had never been her choice of drink, but he had loved it and she wanted to hang on to the taste of his lips a little longer. Even if she was kissing a bottle and not a person. 

There was suddenly a pounding on her door, and she ignored it until she heard the voice on the other end of it.

“Rian, I can hear you ignoring me in there.”

She groaned as he continued his assault on her front door.

Pulling herself upright slowly, feeling her head swim in slow motion as she did so, she managed to drag herself to the door to find one Harry Styles standing on her doorway with the abject look of horror painted across his face.

Rian eyes narrowed at him involuntarily.

She knew she didn’t look her best, but he was the one who came traipsing to her side of town and banged incessantly on her door looking all kinds of dapper in his signature look.

Before she could think of something to say in her alcohol fueled mind, he beat her to the chase, “Why did you email me my calendar for the week followed by what looked like like your head banging onto the keyboard repeatedly?”

She gritted her teeth against his heavy unmistakable drawl.

Everything was too loud, the ground felt like it was moving, and the contents of her stomach was coming close to emptying its very liquid contents onto the feet of her employer.

“I need a week off,” she announced, voice hoarse and barely above a whisper.

The amount of light streaming in through the door and the added noise that was Harry Styles was not sitting well with her state of fifty percent vodka, fifty percent girl.

Almost as if noticing the signs and piecing them together, he leaned in to study her with a raised eyebrows, “Have you been drinking?”

There was a pause as her brain registered his question.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“So you’re well enough to indulge in afternoon drinking, but you need time off?”

“To indulge in the said afternoon drinking,” Rian cocked her head, wondering why it was not making as much sense to him as it was for her.

His brows knotted together as if it was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, and they stood at her doorway for what felt like forever before he made the perfectly reasonable request to enter her home.

“Fine,” Rian rolled her eyes, stepping aside a bit wobbly, “But I don’t want to hear a word about how the place is a mess.”

Harry scoffed, and she almost felt insulted if it weren’t for the words that came out of his mouth next, dripping with sarcasm, “And how would the place look if it were clean?”

She shut the door behind him and ignored the comment.

“What’s going on?”

Harry picked up the bottle of vodka whilst eyeing its contents or rather its lack thereof precariously. She snatched the bottle from him with such force she felt like she needed to lie down all over again.

“Jack broke up with me,” she sighed, bottle in hand, bum landing not so delicately on her couch where Harry eventually joined her. It felt all kinds of inappropriate to have her boss in her home whilst she was practically radiating alcohol from her pores, but she dismissed the thought quickly.

She hadn’t taken a day off in over fourteen months, and frankly, she felt entitled to as much.

And if he was going to invite himself into her home because of the shock that accompanied her asking for a few days off, it was completely his prerogative.

He swiped the bottle from her hand with ease and took an easy swig of the clear contents, “That married prick you’ve been seeing?”

“Oh I wasn’t aware that you had a monopoly on questionable decision making,” she glared at him stonily as he passed the bottle back.

Rationality and patience aren’t exactly a common strong trait when one had copious amounts of vodka metastasising through their veins.

Plus she was still reeling from the embarrassment over the circumstances of him, her boss, finding out about her dirty little affair. It wasn’t a proud moment, the past two years of her life has been dedicated to not so proud moments, but she was good at keeping Harry’s life in order and calling him in the middle of the night because his was the only number she memorised was probably the lowest rung in her ladder of bad decisions.

“Look, blokes and brain don’t always go hand in hand – we think with an organ, but one that’s a little more south,” he shrugged.

He’d always been consistently kind. And he had never really made her feel that she was anything less than a person; there were no coffee runs or laundry runs. Although there were the more occasional morning calls and house sitting she had to do.

But this was decidedly neither one of those occasions.

“Why are you here again?” Rian asked, breaking through her own reverie.

Another shrug.

“If you’re going to be depressing, might as well do it with some company.”

It was Rian’s turn to frown. Even in her half drunk state she knew his calendar for the week and he most certainly did not have time to waste on her, “You have a three pm with Jeff followed by a dinner reservation at Nobu.”

“Consider it cleared, my assistant is in dire need of some cheering up,” he grinned, cheeky and expectant. Almost as though he was sure he was succeeding in tearing down her defenses and what he liked to call her ‘serious outer shell’.

Over the tenure of their work relationship, he had never failed to attempt to loosen her up.

So she was a little obsessive compulsive about schedules and keeping things in order, but at least the one of them need to ensure that he doesn’t get fired and by proxy have them both out of a job.

And after dropping out from art school, she couldn’t exactly afford to be out of a job.

“Harry, you don’t have to do this,” she started saying with a sigh, contemplating how long it’d take for him to leave and leave her in her misery to finish the bottle alone.

He cocked his head, an easy smile on his lips and his loose curls dangling to one side, “Of course I do.”

It took her two years, but it was then that Rian learned of the real reason behind Harry’s social calendar, of which she is intimately involved with.

She’d always chalked it up to a lifestyle. Because he was a rockstar who couldn’t say no. Because he was too kind for his own good. She always knew on some level that it he was not shallow or selfish or any of the long list of tropes the media made him out to be.

But after two years, she finally realised that it was because he was lonely.

And he could tell that she was too.

.

ii.

It felt like blue.

Rian was sitting on the passenger seat of a retro Benz convertible with the top down and the sky looked like a limitless ocean of blue.

Blue that she was drowning in. Blue that she wanted to drown herself in and never come up for air, ever. Her insides boiled over with hurt and she wanted to just fall endlessly into the embrace of the cloudy hue.

It had been Jack’s favourite colour although he would never have admitted it out loud.

“Men don’t have favourite colours,” he used to say.

But blue was a good look on him and he knew it.

Navy suits, blue ties, even his eyes were a light and airy baby blue. Like the crisp cloudless skies that LA would often have.

Funny how things could change so drastically.

All she could feel in his absence was the colour of healing bruises. The colour of lips when you’ve stayed in the pool for too long, teeth chattering in the cold that it has inflicted. It mirrored her jumbled emotions perfectly as Harry whizzed them through traffic in a mindless spontaneous drive.

She’s barely anchored to the present as she looked up to the sky in all its brilliant glory. And for a moment she thought that if she was blue, then Harry had to be gold.

He was Hollywood’s golden boy after all.

She wanted to touch his radiant surface and watch his rays ripple between her fingertips. She wanted to revel in his light. She couldn’t remember the time where her life felt like gold, a warm swirl of butterscotch; all sunshine and daisies.

There’s a warmth slowly spreading underneath her skin that had nothing to do with the weather or the alcohol, and she felt restless all of a sudden. But then she catches sight of the Japanese restaurant that she and Jack had dinner at and the words tumble out of her mouth carelessly.

“We had our first official date there.”

There was a pathetic sadness in her voice. A sort of longing. A longing for something that wasn’t even hers to begin with.

She could have laughed. Because how do you lose something that wasn’t even yours to begin with.

It’s only been about sixteen hours. But she already missed the way her phone would light up with his name. She already missed his voice, and his smile, and their memories.

But he never promised her anything.

And he was never really hers to begin with.

She hated herself for it.

“D’you want me to loop round and drive by the Affleck-Garner family home?”

His question throws her off and it took a moment before her brain fired the synapses to her mouth to catch up.

“What?”

Harry laughed, hair loose and flopping around in the wind as they pull to a stop at an intersection, “I said, ‘If you want to do the Hollywood break up tour, I could loop around and drive by he Affleck-Garner home.”

“Oh hah hah,” she laughed dryly, barely containing her enthusiasm and forced merriment.

Despite his best efforts, Rian had remained unswayed. Like a rock against the current.

“How is it that you’re resisting my wily charms, Ms Johnson?”

Harry seemed genuinely curious. As though it was something that been playing on his mind for some time, but had never had the courage to ask. Which was crazy because anyone who spent any amount of time within close proximity of Harry would be able to tell you that he is absolutely without shame.

The fact that she had walked in on him stark fucking naked more than once was enough proof of that.

“Having to bring breakfast for hungover mornings and occasionally take out the thrash for someone can do that to you,” she quipped, finding it infuriating that her drunk mind was finding it inescapably hard to let her mind, suddenly reliving the times where her gaze had landed on his tattooed torso.

Where her eyes, completely by accident, landed on the hard ridges of muscles rippled over his chest and stomach, the sharply cut hipbones, and not to mention the region a little lower from there.

He threw her a lopsided smile, staring fixedly at her, whilst his hands moved to throw the blowsy look he previously had on into a clumsily packed man bun.

She could remember a time where she wanted to touch his hair. Feel the soft dark curls against her fingertips. Lean into the crook of his neck and take in his scent. 

She remembered wanting to know him the first time she saw him on the telly, watching him sing on stage, a teen chasing his dream. She remembered wanting to hold him when he and the boys got eliminated. She remembered feeling elated when his band was signed anyway. She remembered going out and buying that first album and the second and the third and listening to them all day.

She remembered wanting him for the longest time. Wanting to be him.

Just a teen chasing a dream.

But then Jack happened.

Her face contorted as though she had smelt something awful.

They were driving again and she could feel the onslaught of the tidal waves coming. Before she could even blink to stop the tears, Harry’s voice was already filling the silence that had taken hold, apparently having decided that any and all silence needed to be extinguished.

“Alright, new rule, every time you start whining about he-who-shall-not-be-named, I buy you something,” he declared, suddenly making a sharp turn.

She rolled her eyes with a scoff before her befuddled mind worked out that he was serious.

“I was not whining,” she protested.

He raised his eyebrow at her direction, indignant towards her protests.

“At this point I know that his pick of poison is vodka, that he’s a radio sports announcer, that his favourite colour is blue, and frankly speaking knowing this much about that prick is pissing me the hell off,” he said with a huff, hands gripping tight on the steering wheel that his knuckles writhed white.

She is too utterly stunned to say anything.

Of the two years that she’s known and worked for him, she’d learned that he was never the most composed (that was Liam) nor the most attentive (that was Niall).

But he was smart, and determined, and he always had a way with words. And at that moment, her fingertips tingled and she wanted to reach out and curl her arms around his frame. She riveted her gaze elsewhere instead, focusing her attention onto the shops they were whizzing by.

“I’m instilling positive reinforcement, everytime you so much as say his name, I will charge my card to something absolutely ostentatious.”

“That sounds like negative reinforcement,” she blinked at his sudden declaration, her head still swimming with a blooming anger she doesn’t quite understand and an odd serenity that Harry’s physical presence was bringing to her.

His eyes twinkled at her statement, ignoring it completely, “First stop, Burberry.”

“Harry, I can’t—”

“Nope, I’ve decided,” he announced pointedly, “Dressed like you shop at Forever Alone and whining about your ex arse of a boyfriend is just not going to cut it.”

She was going to argue, because a loose t shirt and distressed denim was her normal get up for non work days anyway. But then she realised that she had only thrown on the jeans because he had asked her too and was about to leave the house in sweatpants before he stopped her, and conceded to his point.

“Fine, just anywhere but Burberry,” she pouted, defeated, with her arms crossed and sinking further back into the seat, anger giving way to contempt and misery.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow her way, “Why not?”

“Because Addison shops at Burberry.”

“Who’s Addison?”

“Jack’s w— No!” Rian practically screeched the latter part of that sentence, vehemently protesting the look of glee on his face.

“Guess you’re getting a Burberry trench coat,” he said, a smug smile painted on his lips.

“Harry—”

“Think of it as a bonus,” he waved his hand at her dismissively.

“It’s June,” stated as a matter-of-factly with a small chuckle, the bitter irritation she felt was leveling out into a calmer sort of reflection; something a lot more manageable.

“A mid-year post break-up bonus then.”

Rian sighed, eyes fluttering shut in exhaustion already.

It was going to be a long evening, she could tell, as Harry revved up the pace of the car, maintaining its speed down to the infamous shopping district in LA.

.

iii.

It felt like purple.

Like a lilac sky bleeding into life at the wee hours of the morning. Like an explosion of citrus layered grapefruit. More specifically, it was a whiff of L’homme Ultime; woodsy with a touch of intense.

And just like that she was a pool of tears and memories, in her underwear, on the dressing room floor at Saint Laurent’s on Rodeo.

Harry had insisted that he was going to buy her a motorcycle jacket worthy of his personal assistant, which of course translated to stopping by the French fashion house to look at leather jackets costing more than her art school loan. Stepping into expensive shopping hotspots in LA had not been exclusively outside her range as a personal assistant.

And she’s used to seeing the sales girls fawn over him but it was the first time she was on the buying end of things instead of just being a bystander.

He’s anything but bored sighs and obligatory nodding as boys normally are when shopping. He’s easy laughs and childish giggles and filled to the brim with suggestions of what to try and where to go and she could feel his jovial mood beginning to have its effect on her.

Or maybe it was just the trail of champagne that followed them around.

But she had been ushered into a posh dressing room before she could so much as take a sip and Harry started jabbering away outside the changing room when she had just shucked off her jeans and caught a whiff of it of the scent.

Completely out of nowhere.

The sweet familiarity of the fragrance she had gifted him last Christmas completely ripped the rug out from under her. And she’s winded. She can hardly breathe as she slid down to the floor, uncertain if it was a panic attack or just an emotional meltdown.

She covered her hands over her mouth, breathing in and out as the tears welled up and spilled over onto her cheek.

There was a silent rapping on the dressing room door suddenly and she tried to ignore it, choking back the tears.

She stared at her reflection and could have laughed if her throat could remember how to. Her loosely tied hair was a nuclear explosion of a jet black mess that made Hiroshima look like a joke and her eyeliner left over from the night prior was a smudged mess.

She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Words swirled in her head, floating by too quick for her to catch any of it.

“Again, I can hear you ignoring me in there, Ri.”

She knew better than to ignore Harry Styles some more, and so Rian reached to unlock the door without leaving her spot on the ground. He poked his head into the room tentatively, eyes bright and curious as they swept around the mirrored space.

“No, but you were doing so well,” Harry proclaimed when his sight landed on her, evidently flustered at the crying girl in the dressing room.

He stepped in and twisted the lock on the door before returning his attention to her, one heavy brow slanted with disapproval. He slid himself to the ground, settling on a spot next to her and they sat that way, in silence.

“I don’t get it,” he announced, shaking his head, “You’re smart, and beautiful, and driven, and he’s just some married idiot.”

He’s looking at her like under his eyes he’s seeing everything good about her and she struggled not to flush under his penetrating gaze. As though he knew that the pain she felt wasn’t just any deep radiating sorrow. That it was beyond mere rejection, beyond a silly infatuation with someone that wasn’t even hers to begin with. That it was an echo how how she saw herself, how she saw the world.

And he couldn’t for the life of him understand that.

It was something that was so dangerous about Harry. She’s not sure if it’s the way that he could thaw out a numb heart like hers or the way he was so effortless about it.

And right then, for the first time, she admitted it out loud, “I went after him.”

The silence that followed her statement was deafening, his eyes furrowed in an unspoken confusion written across his brow. “He used to babysit me,” she explained inadequately.

“I was ten and he was sixteen, and he used to come by every evening because my parents worked late. And every night I’d show him watercolour paintings I’d done and he’d put on one of those sports announcer voices, ‘Such form! Beautiful technique! Splendid use of colouring! Look at how that mahogany purple blends into a deep royal shade of magenta, now that’s a risk that’s paid off!’” Rian chuckled at that last bit, remembering how his voice had made her feel like home. How his enthusiasm had been the one constant encouragement to pursue art.

“When I got into art school despite my parent’s adamant objections, I gave him a call and we realised that we were both in LA,” she shrugged, the words tumbling out of her mouth without so much of a thought.

It was innocuous, at first. But that quickly changed, morphing into drinks at dive bars and late night rendezvous. She sighed at the memory, dropping her eyes, unable to meet Harry’s gaze as she finally admitted to herself more than anything, that she was in a mess of her own making.

“I was alone in a strange town, and he was already a married man, but he wasn’t some fifty-year-old skeeze who took advantage of me; I pursued him, I went after him even though I knew that things like that only ever end one way.”

There was a pregnant pause. But then Harry sliced through the silence with an easy charm, “Half naked on the dressing room floor at Saint Laurent?”

A choked laugh escaped from her lips and suddenly she was very aware of how exposed she was. In every sense of the word.

It was all such a mess.

As a child who painted pretty pastels, she’d never thought in a thousand years that she’d end up nearly a homewrecker at the age of twenty two and slaving it out as a personal assistant to one fourth of the biggest pop stars in Hollywood to pay her student loans for a degree she never completed.

But he was telling her about how you’ll wake up one day and you won’t feel as sick and Rian’s struck, not for the first time, by how beautiful the specimen in front of her was.

She remembered watching him years ago on the telly and how haggard and jaded he looked right then in front of her in comparison. But even with the age and the complexities of Hollywood weighing on him, it wasn’t enough to make him ugly.

And she was pretty sure she was living someone’s teenage dream out there, but at that precise moment, she just felt lost; drowning in an ocean of lilac she never thought she’d end up in.

Not quite blue but not really red either.

Just a painful in between.

And it suddenly occurred to her that it may have been why she held onto Jack for so much longer than she should have. He represented so much of what could have been. But now he was just an ex. Not an ex-boyfriend, or an ex-lover even, because all they really were were secrets and empty promises, but an ex-something.

An ex-maybe.

Like her art career.

“You’ll be alright,” Harry announced in a low drawl, certainty seeping through his voice as though reading her thoughts, “Time will pass, and you won’t cry when you get a whiff of their perfume, and you won’t want to melt into the ground when someone mentions their name, and eventually you will put yourself together again.”

She wasn’t quite sure what to say to that so she stayed quiet, as she always does; simple and quiet. 

And they stayed like that for a while, her listening to him on the dressing room floor surrounded by articles of clothing she would never have an occasion to wear.

They talk and they laugh and her eyes dry and suddenly everything didn’t seem that bad.

He knew more about her than she thought he would; the fact that she’s was an art school dropout, the fact that she’s not in contact with her parents who cut her off, and the fact that she walked into an interview as a PA completely by accident.

She’s surprised and somewhat pleased for some reason, so before she could stop herself she told him about what all her friends from school once said about what they’d like to do with him and he laughed at that.

A full and hearty rumble with his head thrown back.

“You’ll be fine, Ri, I’m going to make sure of it.”

“By buying me clothes worth more than my salary?” She cocked her eyebrow, feeling a certain lethargy sweeping over her overshare session.

“Exactly,” he smirked as he got to his feet. He reached for a dress that she’s sure costs more than her beat up second hand Toyota, and she protested it meekly. But her words held no real weight to it, and he knew it.

Rian threw the dress on without much difficulty, but she feels the stretch of the fabric anyway as she picked at her appearance in front of the mirror. She had a lithe physique, sure, but it was mostly from a lack of workout as opposed to a solid diet of yoga and kale like the other skinny girls in town.

“You look good enough to dance,” Harry’s voice cut through her thoughts.

His statement caught her so off-guard that she stumbled back a couple of steps as she turned around to face him.

“What? No. No. No!”

“It relieves stress,” he said in a singsong tone, as if that was a good enough reason to dance in the, in her opinion, far too big dressing room.

He took a step toward her and held out his hand. She does consider taking it. But she doesn’t.

"Harry— No!”

Her eyes widened and she shook her head slightly for emphasis.

"No?” He asked, raising an eyebrow her way.

“No.”

He reached out his limbs and took her hands in his instead of just offering it, and he began to sway them both to some imaginary music only he could hear.

She bit down on her lip, annoyed that the corners were already tugging upwards. And she smiled because she can’t help herself, “You know, you might need to re evaluate what a ‘no’ means.”

Harry started to sing to the odd tune they’re dancing to and she laughed harder than she has over the past day and the half. She’s out of breath around him and she realised that his particular brand of addiction can be tricky.

Despite her inner insistence to not have a good time, she felt giddy from the alcohol and bad decisions, and a small curiosity was impatiently bubbling up from within her. Her mind ran over the various events of the day, expression remaining relatively focused despite the wide array of emotions looming over her.

He was good at being the entertainment, that much was clear, from years of practice no doubt. But he doesn’t seem to bore of her, like she expected he would.

The fuzzy parts of her mind drew comparisons to the Harry in the press versus the Harry who cleared his schedule to cheer his assistant up and her half drunk mind decided that happy Harry was her favourite aesthetic.

She grinned to herself and he noticed the shit eating grin on her face. His gaze searched hers with an unnerving thoroughness and Rian almost shifted her glance as they continued to clumsily faux waltz.

Almost.

Because she couldn’t.

His dark green irises were tracing her lips, as though in full concentration, taking in their every curve. Harry was observing her as shamelessly as she was observing him, with an underlying sense of attraction in his raffish stare.

.

iv.

It felt like red.

Pure unadulterated red in all its passion dripping glory. Like a bonfire spitting out fiery red gold sparks.

Her nerves felt positively on fire. Her skin electrified at his touch. Her mind racing.

She had never wanted anything more in her entire life.

They’d stopped dancing, standing face to face and completely stationary for a still moment.

The air was thick with a sweltering unnamed tension. And suddenly his hand was skimming down the length of her waist, dropping swiftly along the curve, coasting into a slow, delicious freefall.

Her eyes flutter shut in the pure elation in his touch and her pulse skyrocketed when she reopened them to his expression. His hazy, heavy-lidded gaze.

And at that moment, Rian suddenly found that she could not breathe.

And it had nothing to do with the tight fabric wrapped around her body.

She swore she could feel electricity pulses shooting up and down her spine, further weakening her resolve.

A split, millisecond passed and that’s when it happened. His mouth was quickly on hers, all hot and demanding and pure bliss.

Time stood still as her mind short-circuited itself.

His legs moved them gracefully backwards until her back hits a solid surface, lips still connected. Her knees buck in the slightest and her hands drop to her sides, grasping at the cool surface of the mirror pressed against her back as if it were the only support she’s ever known.

His mouth possessive over hers, silently urgent and long overdue.

“Harry, wait,” she all but chuckled the words against him, voice reduced to a airy growl in the dizzying spur of the moment lust.

He dragged his teeth against her bottom lips tantalizingly and she had never felt more at risk of her eyes rolling into the back of her head in pure pleasure.

“You know, two years and I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that word,” he shot back in a low, husky drawl, lips curling at the corners as he brought them up the line of her jaw.

And it was true; in all her organisation and deadlines and schedules, she never needed a moment’s breather. Things were never too out of hand or too hectic. But then again, she had never been pinned between her employer and a mirror in a posh Rodeo Drive store before.

Her arms moved completely on their own and wrapped itself aggressive around his neck, drawing his lips back to hers.

His mouth slanted over hers and she felt, rather than heard herself, moan into his mouth

Harry’s hands were immediately on her hip, fingers dexterously pulling the fabric upwards as he let his fingers glide over a slither of her silky exposed skin. He dragged his lips away from hers and moved them across the line of her jaw, down her neck, and she relinquished whatever small vestige of control she had, craning her head to the side to allow him better access.

Her hands roamed downwards and deftly undoes it at a speed she’ll be embarrassed about later.

Her knees grew weaker and weaker and she clung to him for support as his fingers clumsily tried to hike the dress up further and off. With frustrated growl, she heard a pronounced rip and knew that the seams had come undone. Not unlike her state of mind.

“Harry!” She hissed at the sudden maneuver, shocked.

He didn’t even attempt to look sorry, merely muttered against the expanse of skin on her neck.

“Well, that’s unfortunate.”

The drawl was warm, teasing, and he reinforced it by giving her earlobe a playful nip. His lips slowly brushing up her neck, tongue flickering out every so often and eliciting many a hitched breath from her already overworked lungs.

“I can’t afford that dress, you know,” she announced in a stubborn concession, though given the breathy, hungry way it came out, it was clear to anyone who could hear them that it was not a huge concern of hers.

And neither was it his.

“Buy you the dress,” he murmured against her skin.

“Buy you anything in the shop you want.”

Rian tried her best to be mad about the the dress that he’d just ruined, a dress she quite liked but was never going to have a chance to wear. But she can’t seem to make herself feel anything that wasn’t unabated lust when his lips was on her skin the way it was and his body flush against hers.

In a swift movement, he swivelled her around and they were both facing the mirror.

She watched as his hands move down slowly, his pupils dilated and their breaths heavy and in sync. Her eyes slid close as his fingers wormed their way into her cotton underpants before settling themselves against her sensitive bundle of nerves.

Harry circled a finger around her clit and she gasped audibly, aware of their current predicament, grounding against his hand, moaning desperately. She could feel his breathing grow more ragged against his neck and her hands clung to his neck for support.

Harry was whispering her name into her ear in a low sultry voice and she knew she was a goner.

Completely lost.

Any inhibitions she could have dreamt of having flown out the window.

His hands suddenly moved upwards and Rian groaned at the sudden lost of contact, eyes flying open to be confronted with her reflection with Harry behind her, a small smirk on his lips as his hands moved up to paw at her chest, releasing them from the fabric that was her bra.

She looked completely undone in her reflection, dress hiked up to her hips and cleavage spilling out from above the neckline of the dress.

His lips nipped and licked on her neck once more, and her hands flew forward, barely supporting herself against the mirror with her knees wobbly.

Harry’s fingers moved back to their frictional spot from before, pushing the flimsy cotton fabric of her underwear aside, parting her and trailing his fingers through her wet folds. His hands worked sensational circles around her clit while his other hand rested on the mirror next to hers.

His dark eyes were boring holes into hers from their reflection and arched her back against him, eyes hungry as he pushed a finger teasingly into her.

Removing one hand from the mirror, she grasped blindly behind her, finding and massaging the bulge in his boxers as she felt her wetness clutching at his fingertips.

His mouth dropped down to nip over her collarbones, coaxing an involuntary mewling sound from her lips.

“Fuck,” she gasped.

He slowly pushed another finger in, pumping in and out, deeper and deeper until his two fingers are deliciously buried knuckle deep.

“Harry, please,” she groaned, her voice a low gravelly whisper as her hand surrendered his pleasure, planting them both against the mirror to keep herself upright and hips wiggling against his diligent fingers.

“I’ll get you there, don’t worry,” he purred into her ear.

She panted out breaths in an attempt to maintain some sort of control but he was everywhere. His lips on her neck and his fingers’ against her entrance, but she still wanted more.

Needed more. And just as she was about to combust, her cheeks aflame and her eyes dilated, she felt the pressure of him pushing impossibly deep inside of her beautifully slowly.

She arched her back impossibly further and raised her heels, balancing on her toes, desperate for more. Feeling his hand move to the sides of her hips, he moved out a little way experimentally and thrusted back in.

“Shit.”

Rian silently cursed the thin walls in her head and rocked her hips against his wantonly, feeling their bodies flush up against one another.

It wasn’t long until their bodies were slapping against one another, too loudly and too recklessly, pushed up on the far too thin dressing room walls. But she was too far gone to care, looping her arm backwards around his neck and leaning onto his shoulder for support.

Finding a rhythm that suited them both and letting his pace build slowly, Harry slid in and out of her to a delirious beat, pressing her hard against the wall while her breath caught in her throat.

He was moving in a slow, smouldering rhythm and Rian wasn’t quite sure how she was still standing as her hands moved completely of their own accord to paw at his half-buttoned silk Gucci something or other shirt.

Harry hoisted her bum further up with ease, and none-too-gently continued their lower body assault on one another.

He was whispering sweet nothings into her ear, his voice strained and breathless and quiet.

It sounded too distant for her to centre her attention around as a bubbling heat rose from her core, a combination of Harry and the underwear he opted not to peel off.

Her neck tensed at the additional contact that the fabric provided, incessantly rubbing her clit as he drove her to her edge. Rian bit down on her red lip and bruised lips, and her eyelashes fluttered involuntarily. She was on the precipice of an orgasm and it was hard to focus on anything but the blinding sensation of his sweet friction.

“Stay with me,” he demanded with a groan, so low and guttural it was practically a growl.

She struggled to keep her eyes open and she forced herself to trail his gaze in the mirror, landing on her own face. One that she barely recognised. Bathed in the intense gratification as his hips took her, hard and deep and steady.

“Fuck,” she gasped, barely holding on.

He clamped a hand over her mouth when he moved harder, his skin slapping against the back of her thighs as the other hand gripped the side of her waist tightly, moving her to his rhythm. Rian felt like she was on the brink of passing out, her stomach twisting and her muscles shuddering with a wave of pleasure.

Heat blasted through her body at an alarming speed.

And then in a moment that felt like a second and forever at the same time, neither of them could even think.

.

v.

It felt like… a swirling technicolour.

Everything blended together and the dripping palette whirled at the back of her mind so violently she could no longer distinguish where one began and the other ended.

Everything was eerily calm. And quiet. Like the eye of a hurricane.

For a moment, everything stopped; the thumping beat, the rush of blood to her head, the ache in the hollow cavity that was her chest. She couldn’t feel any of it anymore, or think, and hell, she wasn’t even sure if she was breathing.

Every colour merged and melted together into his green eyes and jet black hair and every colour in between.

Her eyes opened gently and seeing his reflection behind her is better than seeing him for the first time in person.

Rian shuddered against the wall and he collapsed against her.

It was exactly what she needed; to not think, to forget even if it was only temporary.

As her dazed mind slowly came back to their senses, she wondered how no one has politely disturbed their little tryst quite yet.

But then again, the walls of Yves Saint Laurent have probably seen and heard a lot worse.

And they kept their skin to skin contact for a while, holding onto the moment that each is so terrified will disappear if either one of them let go. She doesn’t know what she should say, or if she should say anything at all, and Harry can’t seem to stop touching her.

His hands skimmed over her body, a ghost over her skin as though he’s afraid that if he removed they physical contact, she would disappear.

When he finally spoke, an apology spilled from his lips, one that she didn’t quite anticipate.

“I’m sorry,” he stuttered, “I shouldn’t have—”

“Hey, I seduced a married man and then proceeded to get into my boss’ car drunk off my ass,” she started saying, incoherently babbling almost, letting the electrified atmosphere overcome her deliriously sore body.

Her mind is hazy from the exertion and probably the vodka that is still making its way through her system but she felt that it was both more than enough of a just cause to absolve him of whatever responsibility he thought he had.

She chuckled to herself, making light of the situation, and told him exactly that.

Because it didn’t have to be more than what it was.

But Harry merely kept quiet, eyes steadily trained on hers, flickering with something too brief for her to decipher, leaving behind nothing more than the same dark emerald stare.

He looked totally inscrutable, brow lowered into one of the deepest frowns she had ever seen on him. It was a strange frown, not quite angry, not quite confused, not quite brooding. It was as though he had his guard up.

It was a look that didn’t suit him, she decided.

But then out of nowhere, his lips were on hers again, and she felt herself melting against him, her hands sliding up and meeting around his neck.

Rian didn’t understand what they were, and she probably never would, but in that moment, it really didn’t matter. All that mattered, cheesy though it may be, was that his touch made her heart flutter in ways she never expected to feel again and her skin boiled at his touch.

He nipped at her lower lip, parting her mouth with his and she felt her brain cells die.

The kiss lasted no time at all and when it ended, Harry rested his forehead on hers, their chests heaving in unison.

It comes out as barely a whisper, but the words that came out of his mouth would be ingrained into her mind for the rest of eternity.

“You’re not one of those girls to me.”


End file.
